award winning poet

monique jonath

monique jonath is a twenty-one-year-old queer black poet from Oakland, CA (the ancestral lands of the Ohlone people) who is currently a senior studying gender and sexuality studies and psychology at Brown University.

They started writing poetry as a joke in early high school, but it quickly developed into one of their biggest passions. They were a finalist for the position of Oakland Youth Poet Laureate in both 2018 and 2019 and their work has been published in the Youth Speaks anthology Between My Body and the Air (2020), Visitant Lit, and in the Sixteen Rivers Press youth poetry contest. They were also a finalist and a winner of the writer-voted Sixfold poetry contest.

In their free time, they are a peer sexual health educator, contemporary and African dancer, and music enthusiast.

acclaimed novelist and poet

Mark Graham

Mark Graham is a critically acclaimed novelist and poet who has been writing professionally since 1988. He has written and published five critically acclaimed novels: The Harbinger (Henry Holt & Co.), The Missing Sixth (Harcourt, Brace, & Jovanovich), The Fire Theft (Viking Penguin), The Natanz Directive (St. Martin’s Press), and The Five Portals (Castle Knight Press). He has also written two acclaimed collections of poetry, Parents Are Diamonds – Children Are Pearls. (Amur Books) and And Wrap Your Arms Around Living (Castle Knight Press).

Mark lives in Denver with his wife. A love of gardening has also led to a passion for raising bonsai plants. He spends as much time outside as possible hiking, biking, and golfing. Working with young writers is one of the things he enjoys most.

Honored short story writer and poet

Ann Tinkham

Ann Tinkham is a published author, ghostwriter, and editor based in Boulder, Colorado. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Apt, Denver Syntax, Edifice Wrecked, Foliate Oak, Lily Literary Review, Short Story Library, Slow Trains, Synchronized Chaos, The Adirondack Review, The Battered Suitcase, The Citron Review, The Literary Review, Toasted Cheese, Wild Violet, Word Riot, and others. Ann’s essay, “The Tree of Hearts” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her story, “Afraid of the Rain” was nominated for Sundress’s Best of the Net Anthology. She’s the author of Climbing Mountains in Stilettos and two story collections, The Era of Lanterns and Bells and Stories I Can’t Show My Mother.

Ann is an anti-social butterfly, pop-culturalist, virtual philosopher, ecstatic dancer, political and java junkie. When she’s not tinkering with words, she’s seeking adventures. Ann has talked her way out of an abduction and talked her way into the halls of the United Nations. She hitchhiked up a mountain in Switzerland and worked her way down the corporate ladder. Ann has flown on a trapeze and traded on the black market in Moscow. She cycles up steep canyons, hikes to glacial lakes and mountain peaks, and blazes her own ski trails.

Award winning poet

Mridvi Khetan

Mridvi Khetan, MK, is a budding Indian writer, currently pursuing a double major in Psychology and Economics as well as a minor in creative writing at the University of Chicago. She placed first in the One Page Poetry competition in 2022 and received an honourable mention in the 2023 contest. Her work has been previously featured on Delhi Poetry Slam, publications on campus and her own personal writing blog. She has also been a semi finalist in the honourable Cultural Weekly’s Jack Grapes Poetry Prize 2020. MK is also passionate about slam poetry and often performs in her hometown Delhi, India.

When she’s not wildly associating random observations in her life in search for a poem, Mridvi dabbles in several hobbies. She’s the president of UChicago Aag, a South Asian fusion acapella group on her campus and loves classical music as well as playing the guitar. Outside classes she spends her time running, soul cycling, learning aerial fitness, working on her cooking skills and reducing her caffeine addiction.